Garden Mix Room, Chester - atmos in future hopefully

[Dave Le Sange]

Hi Team,

Hope everyones doing well. I'm Dave, a recording engineer and mixer based in Chester, in the north west of England. I was an avid reader of the old John Sayers forum, and was sad to hear of both his and the forum's passing. I've been hanging out here reading the threads for a year odd now (Endorka's and Gareth's particularly inspiring) but it is finally time for me to begin my own actual real build.

After years of renting, and therefore never really being able to do a proper buildout, my partner and I this year bought our first (and hopefully forever) home. It's got a fairly large back garden, with plenty of space at the back for a standalone room in room construction of a control room plus there's a detached garage that I'm hoping I can get an isolation booth into, though that's very secondary to the mix room.

Lately I've been doing more mixing than recording, and I'm very intrigued by Atmos - so what I'd like is a killer control room with enough isolation to drown out my neighbours and their lawnmowers, but plan it out with the ability to add the Atmos speaker array at a later date, if thats not a crazytown bananapants idea.

OVERVIEW & GOALS
I am very much in the planning/research phase of the project. My goal is a great control room, RFZ design, soffit mount the stereo monitors (if not all the ear height atmos speakers), room-in-room inside-out walls and ceiling to maximise internal acoustic space.

I have begun an outline planning permission application (UK) and hope to be allowed to build a structure W4.5m x L6.5m x H3.0m, (29.25sqm) which will I figure allow for internal dimensions of at least w3.5m x l5.5m x h2.5m.

It is a shade under the recommended 20sqm for a control room at 19.25sqm, but I am trying to keep mostly to UK permitted development rules in order to make my application more likely to succeed. I also assume theres a way to gain back some space in the design, I have not done the appropriate maths for air gap, transmission loss and whatnot as yet.

Speaking of transmission loss, I'd like to shoot for 50dB. I mix at sane volumes when I'm alone, but I'm a night owl, and I'd like to not have my neighbours hate me, so isolation as high as I can really. Plus daytimes it seems theres never a moment where someone around isn't mowing a lawn or trimming a hedge.

The nearest neighbour's house to where I want to build is approx 10m away. I will order a sound level meter take ambient readings, anyone got any recommendations on a good one?

I plan to do the old fan in, fan out plus minisplit manoeuvre for ventilation and AC. I've spent too much time working in studios without good ventilation to know better than to skip out on that step! Also I loathe being too warm. I'd like some natural light, though it doesnt need to be a large window.

Future goals, after the stereo mix room is done would be to go to a 9.1.4 Atmos array in there. My mentor Said I'd be foolish not to plan ahead for Atmos if I'm building a ground up room in 2024 - he had to open the walls and ceiling in multiple places to get power and audio to his Atmos install. I figure what's the harm in thinking about it in the planning phase, my proposed room size is within Dolby's minimum recommended room size requirements for an immersive mix room.

Further future goals, I'd like to build an isolation booth in the detached garage big enough for my upright piano, hammond and leslie that would still have enough room for a singer with guitar comfortably.

I am starting with just a back garden, so this will be a ground up build. I am able to do the majority of the building work myself with help from my tradie family members. My budget is roughly £30k over the next four years, not including labour. I'll do what most do and build in stages while getting the inside design done.

TO SUM UP

Absolute goals
-An excellent control room for stereo music mixing and production
-50dB transmission loss (or as close as I can get)
-Good ventilation and AC
-Natural light

Future goals
-Isolation booth in garage
-Convert control room into an Atmos room

QUESTIONS

-Can someone recommend a good sound level meter?
-What version of SketchUp should I get?
-Does anyone with experience of the UK planning permission system have any tips?

Thanks team, I hope that's thorough enough and I haven't missed anything obvious. Have a good day if you can everyone.
Dave

[gullfo]

welcome. some thoughts on maximising the build:

- consider digging down to get the additional height. my suggestion is to aim for 3m interior so consider digging down 500-750mm at least to get there.

- almost any sound meter with A / C settings should suffice for day 0 work. i use an older digital radio shack model which has 10db bands which let me calibrate my speakers etc to 1/10 of a db. ebay or equiv and in the USA $50 or so.

- sketchup version depends on your budget. there is the GO version which will suffice (https://www.sketchup.com/en/plans-and-pricing-sale) unless you must have extensions which you need the pro versions for and will cost a decent amount of money. the GO version can work just fine - esp if you learn the concept of grouping and componentising the things you draw. this will allow for re-using them, reducing model size, and later tagging etc. if you searc haround you might find a non-hacked version of 2017 MAKE version.

- i don't have direct experience with UK planning but you could likely hire an architect to assist with the property planning and submissions.